Tommie Shelby

"Racism, Morality, and Social Criticism"

Friday May 4, 2007
3:30 p.m.
347 University Hall, 230 N. Oval Mall

Co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy

Tommie Shelby is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences and African and African American Studies at Harvard University.  His special interests include African American philosophy, philosophical perspectives on race and racism, social and political philosophy, and Marxist social theory.

Shelby, a philosopher and political theorist, has most recently completed a book on African American political philosophy, entitled We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity (Harvard University Press, 2005) and co-edited, with Derrick Darby, Hip Hop and Philosophy: Rhyme 2 Reason (Open Court Publishing, 2005).

Other publications include “Race and Social Justice: Rawlsian Considerations” (Fordham Law Review, 2004), “Blackness and Blood: Interpreting African American Identity,” with Lionel K. McPherson (Philosophy & Public Affairs, March 2004), “Two Conceptions of Black Nationalism: Martin Delany on the Meaning of Black Political Solidarity” (Political Theory, October 2003), “Ideology, Racism, and Critical Social Theory” (The Philosophical Forum, 2003), “Parasites, Pimps, and Capitalists: A Naturalistic Conception of Exploitation” (Social Theory and Practice, 2002), “Is Racism in the ‘Heart’?” (Journal of Social Philosophy, 2002), and “Foundations of Black Solidarity: Collective Identity or Common Oppression?” (Ethics, 2002).

Shelby earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh in 1998, and his B.A. magna cum laude at Florida A&M University in 1990. Before coming to Harvard, he was Assistant Professor of Philosophy at The Ohio State University (1998-2000).

Tommie Shelby
John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Social Sciences and African and African American Studies
Harvard University